A friend of mine intercepted the following letter addressed to his boss, who is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Did he technically commit a felony? Sure. Do I care? No.

Date: June 30th, 2017

Dear: [redacted]

I am aware that this letter has come to you as a surprise as we have not met before or handled any business deals in the past. Nevertheless, I have contacted you with genuine intentions and I hope I can trust you with this Inheritance opportunity which will be explained below.

My name is Elliot Cooper, an account manager with the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC).I retrieved your contact address in my search for the next of kin to a deceased customer of our bank Mr. Morris [redacted] , a citizen of your country, who lived an died in London, Ontario Canada from Cardiac Arrest in the year 2007.Unfortunately this customer died intestate leaving his bank account with an open beneficiary status. All efforts made by our bank to locate his relatives have been unsuccessful so I decided to write you as I have monitored this account in the bank for almost 10 years now and no one has come forth with any claim. I would like to present you to our bank as his next of kin to claim that this dormant account worth $6.9 Million USD (Six Million Nine Hundred Thousand US Dollars).

You will apply to the bank as an extended relative to the deceased customer while I work from the inside to make sure all needed information and evidence are provided to you to back up your claim. The account has an open beneficiary status, which is why I have contacted you to come forth and claim the funds as the next of kin and beneficiary. Since he is from your country and you both share the same last name, it's easy for you to become his official next of kin. If we do not make a claim to the funds now, the funds would be reverted back to the system as an unclaimed estate at the expiration of a 10 year dormancy period as approved.

I assure you that this transaction would be handled under due inheritance procedures and every necessary arrangement will be put into place to make you the real beneficiary of the Inheritance. It also requires confidentiality at this stage and and I believe that you are ready to keep this absolutely discreet until you are able to claim the funds from the bank. Once the funds are released to you, it will be shared between the two of us.

Please send your response to my personal email: elliotcooper888@mail.com indicating your readiness to proceed with this transaction and we will discuss more details as well as the procedure to achieve a successful completion. This is an opportunity of a lifetime and people achieve it every day.

Finally, Canada's in the big league! Except, except, was the stamp Canadian, was it actually mailed from here? I'd hate to think that Canada was just being used as a convenient fake locale without the scam actually originating here. Now that Trump is threatening to modify or discard NAFTA we need to find alternate avenues to screw you Americans.

"Yes Burnaby49, I do in fact believe all process servers are peace officers. I've good reason to believe so." Robert Menard in his May 28, 2015 video "Process Servers".

There are a couple of red flags immediately obvious to any Canadian citizen who receives a letter or email of this type:1. Should a Canadian citizen die intestate an executor is appointed by the province. As a government official he/she will follow the letter of the law with all communications by registered letter and also extract a ridiculous percentage of the proceeds of the estate that varies by province;2. Canadian banks hate giving away money and will go to ridiculous extents to delay "cashing out" bank accounts, stock holdings and investments.

Personal example of a transaction with a VERY large Canadian bank who has an online stock trading service:1. Dear Sir, a customer of yours, Mister Deceased, died on this date. As the executor of his estate, I request that you convert all of his trading account (roughly 200 k$) to cash as soon as possible. Enclosed are death certificate and letters of probate.2. Thank you for this letter, we are attempting to contact our customer to verify that this is in accordance with his desires.3. Your customer is dead, do not expect a speedy reply.4. But we have to wait three months for a customer reply of this nature.5. See death certificate and letters of probate sent with first letter.6. Thank you for dealing with us. I have just took over this account and will be your new contact with this problem. Please forward to us all of your previous communications on this matter. I thank you for being a valued customer and together we can increase the value of your investments.... things that make you say aaargh.

Burnaby49 wrote:Finally, Canada's in the big league! Except, except, was the stamp Canadian, was it actually mailed from here? I'd hate to think that Canada was just being used as a convenient fake locale without the scam actually originating here. Now that Trump is threatening to modify or discard NAFTA we need to find alternate avenues to screw you Americans.

Hush or we will send Glenn Winningham back to plague you Canadites a second time.

"I could be dead wrong on this" - Irwin Schiff

"Do you realize I may even be delusional with respect to my income tax beliefs? " - Irwin Schiff